I can not believe how clean Chicago is. It's a bit like San Diego but better. This is my first time here and I am here for Lollapalooza w/my friend Samy and my new friends Raquel and Elaine. The hotel is only 30 minutes from Grant Park, walking and it was not a bad walk. We got to explore the city. When I woke up in the morning, it was humid. When we came out in the afternoon, it was over cast and humid still, but tolerable. We left the hotel room around noon and we arrived to the fest around 2pm.
When we arrived, I was blown away. I liked what I saw. They had a huge inflatable Lollapalooza sign in front of the park and to get in, it was fast and quick. No hour wait like Coachella. They have it together here. Even the bag search was quick. I think I can get use to this. We where inside in less then 7 minutes. LESS THEN 7minutes, COACHELLA! Once inside, I looked around and this reminded me a bit like the Detour Festival in downtown Los Angeles. You get to see cool bands surrounded by the city scape. It looks amazing.
We walked around a bit to get to know the venue. I can not believe how huge Grant Park is. We walked passed The food court and the selection they had was really good and cheap. They even had deep dish pizza here. That takes about an hour to cook. We had deep dish pizza the first day we arrived and it was......GOOD (Gino's babe ROCKS!). We walked to the South Side of the park to catch The Big Pink. When we got there, the view was........Amazing. Then I noticed they had two stage sets here facing each other from a distance and I was wondering how that was gonna work. I did not look at the program carefully, hold up. Let's talk about the program. That thing was a pocket size book. It had pictures and a small bio on every band that was performing, with the set times and map. This place is winning me over. So impressed. Back to the stage set-up......The way it is set, one band plays first and when that band is over, the other band goes on at the opposite stage. It's the same set up at the North Side of the venue.
The first band we saw was The Big Pink and they where good once again. After that we went to see Devo. While we where waiting for them, I saw this guy stop in front of us and I was looking at him for a bit. Then it hit me, that is Erol Alkan! I took a quick pic of him. Cool. Devo went on and they where AWESUM! What a great performace from them and they had really cool visuals. For pulling 50 something, they sounded great and so much energy. They even had 4 costume changes. Right on......Devo. I need to see this show again indoors and at night. After Devo, we walked around and It's a walk the the North Side.
I wanted to checkout Neon Trees and I was not having them. Let's move on. We went back to the South Side to catch Hot Chip and once again, they killed it. They are dressing so nicely and well gromed. Check them out. No more baggy shirts and pants. Everything all nicely tailored. They don't look like geeks anymore. I miss that. After that we left to get some food. We passed by Chromeo and they opened up witha new song that sounded promising. We ate and headed to catch Lady Gaga. Now it was only Samy and I. His sister and her friend went to catch Erol Alkan. We did too and he was good. But once Tiga went on stage and he was playing a lame set. What is he doing? I liked the stuff he use to play back in 2003. So we decided to leave after 15 minutes and headed to see Gaga. We arrived and the place was getting full with Gaga Monsters. She went on time but she sang behind this huge curtain projecting her shadow on it. The curtain was lefted almost half way through her song. The stage was cool. It looked like a Broadway musical. She had her dancers and I leaned over to Samy and said, "is that Grace Jones?". But of course I was kidding around. We only heard 3 songs and left to catch The Strokes. Boy was that a SHOW!
This is my first time seeing The Strokes and they Kicked A$$. They had this really cool old school Jumbo Tron on the background that displayed simple visuals in red. What a differance from Lady Gaga's outragouas stage. Simple sometimes is better and it showed here. The Strokes played the hits and from what I hear, Mr Casablancas was a bit tipsy. Rock Star. I did not see the person helping him (Julian Lead Singer) back on stage when they did the encore. Thats what Samy told me. ROCK STAR! Other then him being a bit messy, they sounded great and I would not mind seeing them again in the future. Day 1 is over. A-
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